But recently, the 25-year-old Dunedin electrical apprentice got the shock of his life when he won the industrial category at the New Zealand Master Electricians Apprentice Challenge in Auckland.
The win has qualified him for the WorldSkills Competition in Germany next year.
“I’ve always enjoyed working with my hands.
“Back in the day, I would pull things apart.
“It started with normal toys, then it moved to anything electrical that I could get my hands on, like remote control cars, speakers.
“I even pulled apart the microwave and the oven.
“I was probably about 16 when I pulled apart the hob and replaced the capacitor so it would work again.”
Despite warnings from family and friends about the dangers of playing with electricity, Mr Marshall said he could not contain his curiosity.
“I was pretty cautious – everything was unplugged and I had a rough enough idea about what I was doing to not get hurt.
“I’ve never had a shock.”
Since then, he has studied at Otago Polytechnic and gained a bachelor of engineering technology (electrical).
Now he is building on those skills as an electrical apprentice, under the guidance of the team at Switchbuild Ltd, and by the end of this year he will be a registered electrician with a New Zealand certificate in electrical trade (level 4).
As part of his apprenticeship, he spent his first two years building industrial-sized switchboards, and this year he has progressed to programming small computers inside the switchboards which control when power is turned on and off to certain switches.
While the programming side of his work took up most of his working day, he said part of his job still involved going out to work sites and commissioning switchboards.
“It’s quite a good mix.”
For the past three years, he has been showing off his skills by winning the Otago Regional Master Electricians Apprentice Challenge for three consecutive years, and after scoring the highest in New Zealand this year, he qualified for the national finals.
“Winning the national finals is the first time I’ve come close to being shocked.”
